The color purple in art / media. What does it mean. Why do we see more of it these days?

[ChubbiChibbai]

The first two Dragon Age games had very distinct cover art with the bold reds and black on white. Visually the game as well had a fairly desaturated and muddy palette - altough that is also a byrpoduct of how many games looked that gen.

Inquisition was gold and green which made sense given the story and themes. The green representing the evil and also the color of the veil that ran as a central theme throughout the game. Overall the style of the game was fairly vibrant and saturated. I don't feel that it had much of a unique style other than when the viel was present. Overall visually it was quite neutral and even boring.

Now with veilguard the cover art is very dominant with Purple.
Typically purple is used to represent Royalty, eroticism, mysticism. We see alot of it in scifi and fantasy (Guardians of the Galaxy) and recently in movies as the color of certain spells effects.

But i also see it crop up in quite a few games over the last year or so. Just skimming my library i have Dungeons of Hinterberg, Yars Rising, Lunacid, Wayfinder, Kingdom Two Crowns recently updated their cover art to be purple dominant with shades of blue and i also see alot more purple in fashion that you would used to. You might previously have seen purple detailing but lately you will see entire items in purple. So i think some of the use is more of a trend. Trends are very easy to copy these days without even being aware of themes.

But i do think that Veilguards color is intentional.
The images from the game its self also appear much more stylised. A much darker contrast to light ratio in the lighting. Lots of blue and purple tones giving me overall more sense of fantasy and mysticism than previous titles. Visually its far more interesting to look at that Inquisition or the earlier titles. I really like that they have consciously gone with a distinct style and colour palette this time around.

Do you think they are just copying a bit of a trend in design by taking a color that isn't often used and putting it at the fore front or do you think there is intent and meaning behind the color choices.

[Kiya]

Purple or purple/green como is frequently used as a colour to designate Magic/Evil/bad/villain or conflicted guy/gal in games and in comics.

https://screenrant.com/comic-supervillains-green-purple-colors-joker-lex-luthor/

One possible reason that comes to mind.

Purple on it's own is associated with royalty and power. So that's another possible reason.

Artist's tend to choose this stuff because helps to have a kind of visual shortcut.... Oh he/she is probably a powerful baddie... etc

Or we could just be overthinking about things too much as we wait for the game.